


all that's left is molecules of you

by lucylikestowrite



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Injury, Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, Missing Scene, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-16 11:29:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16953171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucylikestowrite/pseuds/lucylikestowrite
Summary: Sara Lance. Beloved Captain, hero and warrior. Struck down by a unicorn.-Ava Sharpe. Our beloved leader. Replaced too soon.or: the mega angst everyone obviously wanted after 4.08





	all that's left is molecules of you

**Author's Note:**

> this is for the gals on the L chat who chatted shit about me when i wrote sara dying, so, here, have both of them dying.  
> dedicated to that forum because i'm a petty bitch who doesn't forget anything

Ava is asleep when her phone rings. She wakes up to an empty bed next to her, and is momentarily disappointed, before she remembers that it’s not going to be like this for long. Sara’s going to be living with her. She’s not going to be waking up alone, not anymore. She fumbles blearily for her phone, and sees ‘The Waverider’ flash up on its screen.

Swiping at the screen, she sits up, pushing sleep out of her mind. “Hey, Sara,” she says, on automatic, because no-one else from the Waverider ever calls her.

But it’s not Sara’s voice that answers her, and, immediately, there’s worry in the pit of her stomach. “Ava. You need to get to the Waverider right now,” Zari says, her voice firm.

At the tone of Zari’s voice, Ava is no longer even slightly asleep. “Zari,” she says, her voice rising. “What’s wrong?”

“Just get to the Waverider,” Zari says. “I can’t come get you, or I would. Get here _now_.”

“Zari, please. Is it Sara?”

Zari hesitates for a split second too long. It’s about Sara. That much is clear. “Get to the Waverider,” is Zari’s only answer, and then the call cuts off.

Ava is out of bed a second later, pulling on jeans, pulling a sweater on over her sleep shirt. She fumbles around the bottom of her bed for slippers. There’s no time to go downstairs for real shoes. Her courier is on her bedside table. It’s never out of reach.

The call with Zari has been over for less than thirty seconds when she locks onto the Waverider’s coordinates, portals onboard. As soon as she’s there, she starts walking—towards the med bay, because she knows, in her heart, that that’s where Sara is.

Still, as she walks, she has to check. “She’s in the—”

“Med bay, yes,” is Gideon’s response. “I’m sorry, Director Sharpe.” Her voice is the softest it’s ever been when talking to Ava, and she would give anything to go back to the days when Gideon was calling her a bitch.

She sees evidence of Sara’s injury before she sees Sara. There’s a trail of blood on the floor outside the med bay. Too much blood. More blood than Ava thinks she’s ever seen. Suddenly, her stomach turns, and she’s more than grateful at how close the Waverider’s only bathroom is to the med bay, because, a second later, she’s throwing up.

The last time she’d been sick, Sara had been there to hold her hair back, to soothe her. Now, Sara is twenty feet away, bleeding out. Ava wipes the back of her mouth, grabbing some mouthwash and gargling it before stepping back out into the corridor, moving tentatively towards the door.

She doesn’t want to look in. Doesn’t want to see what’s inside.

She has to.

“Ms. Tomaz,” comes Gideon’s voice. “Director Sharpe has arrived.”

Zari steps out of the doorway. She’s dressed up, some sort of ridiculous hippy costume, but Ava’s not looking at that. She’s looking at the blood on her hands, on her clothes. “Ava,” she says, her voice gentle, stepping closer. Ava moves forward as well, needing to see, needing to know, but Zari pushes her back, lightly. “Ava, I’m sorry. There was a magical creature. A…” she sighs. “A unicorn. Because, apparently, unicorns like murder. He was hurting innocent people. She— she stepped in. Because she’s Sara, you know?”

Ava sucks in air, trying to stay standing. “Is she— is she still alive?”

Zari sighs again. “Just. Not for long. Gideon can’t do anything.”

Ava sniffs, trying to stop tears from falling, and failing. She wipes them away with her shirt. It’s already stained red with Sara’s blood from Zari’s hands, and she hasn’t even seen Sara yet. “Then I need to see her. I need to see her before she—”

“I know,” Zari says. “I know.”

She motions Ava closer, into the doorway and once Ava’s in it, she can see Sara there, laid out on one of the chairs, a huge gash in her side, so big it makes Ava want to throw up again. One of the boys presses a wad of bandage onto it, but not before Ava’s seen it, seen how bad it is.

Even thought she knew what to expect, she still can’t help the shocked, “Sara!” that escapes from her mouth, as she races across the room to her side. The other Legends part, leaving room for her to slot right in. Sara’s hand is limp at her side, a drip feeding into it, and she reaches for it, before hesitating. “Can I?” she asks, turning back to Zari.

Zari sighs once more. “You can’t make her much worse at this point, Ava. Just hold her hand.”

“Yeah, Aves,” comes Sara’s voice, so weak that Ava’s heart shatters. Her breath is rasping in her throat, sucking in air in shuddering gasps. “Hold your girlfriend’s hand.”

Ava hadn’t realised she was awake, and she turns back, gripping down on Sara’s hand with one of her own, moving her other one to stroke some hair out of Sara’s face, looking down, fondly. “Hey, babe,” she says, trying to keep the waver out of her voice. “How you feeling?”

“Great,” Sara gasps out, wincing.

“I’m estimating five minutes, Captain.” Gideon’s voice echoes around the room.

It’s clear what she means.

Five more minutes of life.

Five minutes. That’s not enough. They’re supposed to be moving in together. Waking up next to each other. Coming _home_ to each other. They were supposed to have a lifetime. That’s what Sara has promised when they’d gotten back together. A lifetime, because she wasn’t letting Ava go a second time, so she was only going to be satisfied with a lifetime.

And then a sob rips through Ava, because this _is_ a lifetime. Sara’s lifetime, with less than five minutes left in it. Sara’s getting her wish, in a perverse way.

They were together for the rest of Sara’s life.

Ava gasps, her head spinning, taking short breaths, trying to get oxygen to her brain.

Sara squeezes her hand, so gently it’s almost nothing, but the sentiment is there, and it soothes Ava just enough to force her lungs to work again, to concentrate on Sara in front of her. “Baby,” she says. “You’ll be okay.” And then she’s looking at Zari, and something passes between them, and the others file out, silently. “You’ll be okay.”

Without the others around, others she has to hold her guard up in front of, Ava breaks down fully, tears flowing down her face, dampening her sweatshirt. “I won’t. Sara. I can’t do this without you. I don’t know how to do this without you, not anymore. There has to be _something_ we can do.”

“Only thing would be messing with time. Can’t do that.”

Ava sighs. She knows they can’t do that. She knows that. But still…

“Sara,” she breathes, her voice breaking. She leans down, until their foreheads are touching. “I can’t let you go.”

“Have to,” Sara whispers, a rueful smile on her face. “You were fine before you met me. You’ll be fine after. Just— just don’t rebound _too_ quickly, yeah?” She laughs a bit at her own words, but it’s clear that sentence, and the laughter, were too much for her, and her chest starts heaving, her face going whiter, blood seeping out of the bandage.

It goes against every instinct in Ava’s body not to try to stop the bleeding more than the hasty bandage, but Gideon is more advanced than any first aid Ava could possibly ever learn. If she doesn’t think Sara has a chance, she doesn’t.

“I love you,” Ava whispers. “I’m sorry it took me so long to say it.” She only got a month. A month of Sara knowing she loved her back. It’s not fair. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too, baby,” Sara says. She sighs, grimaces, her hand going to her side. “Kiss me.”

Ava hesitates for a second, and then does, her fingers careful on Sara’s face, pressing the lightest of kisses down onto Sara’s lips. Even just with that, she can taste the blood on her lips, the metal tang bringing more tears to her eyes.

“Like you mean it, Sharpe, come on,” Sara gets out, and so Ava presses in closer, her fingers digging into Sara’s cheek, her mouth falling open as she kisses desperately, tears rolling down both their cheeks, salt water mingling in their mouths.

When Ava pulls back, Sara’s eyes are still closed.

“Three and a half minutes.”

“God, Gideon,” Ava snaps. “Do you have to— do you have to keep fucking doing that?”

“I told her to,” Sara says. “I need to know. Can you— the team?”

Ava nods, calling out for them, never letting go of Sara’s hand. They file back in, their faces the second worst thing Ava has ever seen in her life, second only after Sara, lying there, dying.

She’s talking them through the ship. Putting Zari in charge. Running through protocol (although Ava doesn’t think they ever use it), inner workings, Captain’s secrets, all in short sentences, cramming as much information into as little words as possible.

Ava zones out a little as she talks. She should be listening. These are Sara’s last words. But she feels like she’s floating. It doesn’t feel real. It feels wrong. So wrong.

Like something is wrong with the universe.

And then Sara’s squeezing her hand again.

“I have revised your estimate down to one minute remaining, Captain. I’m afraid the energy you have just expended took another minute from you. Your bodily functions are shutting down.”

Ava gasps, tears still streaming down her face.

Sara sighs, leaning back against the headrest. Ava’s thumb rubs circles in her palm, trying for any sort of respite. Her eyes skate over Sara’s body. The outfit she’s wearing is flimsy, revealing. Cold looking. “Are you cold?” she asks, knowing it’s a stupid question. “You look cold.”

“She’s running an extremely high fever, Director,” Gideon says. “I would be surprised if you could not feel that from her hand.”

And Ava can. She can feel that. She’s not thinking. Her mind has reverted back to some sort of state where it’s ignoring the real problem in front of her, instead focusing on something small, something she knows how to deal with. She puts her hand up to Sara’s forehead, and Gideon’s right. She’s burning up.

A spasm runs through Sara’s body, and she groans, opening her eyes, and Ava has a horrible sinking feeling in her stomach, like this is the end. “Yeah. Fuck. Okay. Okay. Ava. I love you. Team—I love you too. Don’t let anyone else get killed by these creatures, or I’ll come back and haunt you all. I’m serious.”

They _are_ her last words, and Ava can’t stand it.

“Sara,” she whispers, her hand moving down to cup Sara’s cheek, “I can’t do this.”

“Yes, you can. You’ll be okay,” Sara whispers back. She closes her eyes again. “Man. Team around me. Hot girlfriend who loves me. This is _so_ much better than last time.”

And then—

She’s gone.

Ava feels it.

Feels underneath her hands as the life drains out of Sara’s body.

Hears it.

Hears as the machines turn off, because the medicine they were feeding into her, the machinery monitoring her, is no longer needed.

Sees it.

Sees as the colour falls away from Sara’s complexion, as her chest stops rising and falling, as every part of her body goes limp.

Suddenly, she doesn’t care anymore that she’s in front of Sara’s whole team, because all she can think is that Sara is _dead_ , she’s gone and she’s not coming back, never coming back, never going to kiss Ava or touch her again, and it comes out in a strangled moan, her legs giving way underneath her. She crumples on the floor, her world caving in on itself, darkness engulfing her.

She can’t see, can’t hear, can’t feel. Doesn’t _want_ to see, hear, feel, because the last thing her senses told her was that Sara is gone. She’s floating, lost in space, lost in time, because her tether, her rock, the one person who would know how to comfort her right now, is gone. Words are coming out of her mouth, and it’s not until she comes back to herself a little more, as her senses slowly start to kickstart out of necessity, that she realises she’s just repeating ‘No’ over and over again, her subconscious denying it.

And then she feels soft hands on her shoulders, and it’s Zari, pulling her upwards, gathering her in her arms. She didn’t think she knew Zari well enough for this, but she needs it, clinging onto her because now Sara is gone, it feels like this embrace, this touch, is the only thing tethering her to this plane of existence. This fucked up, everything wrong and nothing right, plane of existence.

When she pulls back, she can see that Zari is putting on a brave face. Can see that she wants to break down as well, but she’s not, because she’s Captain now, and Sara had led by example. She’d always been the shoulder to cry on. Now that’s Zari’s job.

Behind her, the boys aren’t so stoic. She can hear Ray and Nate crying. Might even hear Rory sniffling.

Ava stumbles, struggling to even stand up. It feels like all the energy has just been drained from her body. Like, when the life faded from Sara’s body, it took some of Ava’s with it. Her eyes flutter closed.

She needs to sleep.

She can’t sleep. She can never sleep again. Not now.

She needs to stay here, with Sara.

She moves towards the other chair, determined to sit, to stay, but all it takes is Zari’s hand on her arm again to stop her. “Ava,” Zari says, her voice as soft as her hands. “We need to get you laid down somewhere. You need to sleep.”

Ava shakes her head. “I can’t leave her. Not yet. Not yet. I can’t—“ and then her voice dissolves into sobs again, and she buries her face in Zari’s shoulder. “I need to stay here with her.”

Zari sighs. “Ava. It’s not healthy for you to stay with her. It’s not healthy. She wouldn’t want that. You need rest, or there’s no way for you to even begin to process this.”

“Someone needs to— deal with her,” Ava says, forcing the words out.

“We’ll do that,” Zari says, looking at the boys. They nod. “We’ll do that. You’re not in any state to do that. Go lie down, Ava. Please. Get some rest. Get some sleep. It’s the middle of the night. We’ll clean her up.”

“I don’t want to dream,” Ava whispers. “If I dream, it’s just going to be nightmares.”

A bottle appears in the medicine fabricator. “You won’t,” Gideon says, her voice reassuring. “This will ensure dreamless sleep. But you need rest, Director. Your body is shutting down with grief. If you don’t sleep, you’re going to run yourself ragged.”

Ava considers for a second, then sighs, nods in resignation. She glances back at Sara, leans down, presses one last kiss to her temple. Her skin is still warm. She could almost be alive, but there’s no pulse, and it’s not _quite_ warm enough.

It’s horrible.

Zari picks the bottle up, and guides Ava out of the room, towards Sara’s. She obviously knows that Ava would refuse to sleep anywhere else, even despite what has just happened. Inside, she sits on the edge of the bed, numb.

Tears still stream down her face.

Her mind is somehow both completely quiet, dumbstruck, unable to process anything, and also a cacophony of thoughts. Full and empty at the same time. A paradox. Like Sara being dead. It’s a paradox because she’s the most alive person Ava knows. She’d cheated death more times than anyone. She was supposed to keep cheating death.

It’s a paradox because Ava knows, knows in her heart that this is wrong, that the universe is wrong, that this can’t be happening—but it is. It is happening, and right now, dreamless sleep sounds like a good option.

Zari hands her the bottle. “All of it, Ava. And then you’ll be right asleep. No dreams. Just rest.”

Ava obediently downs it, and she’s immediately even more drowsy than before, falling asleep when her head hits the pillows.

She wakes up in another cold bed, and when she remembers, it’s like someone’s dumped cold water on top of her. Sara is gone. For good. Her stomach hurts. Every part of her hurts. It’s like her grief has become physical, an ache in every single one of her bones. Sobs rack through her body, another moan escaping from her mouth that rings out, loud and horrible through the room. Through Sara’s room.

Her pyjama top is on the pillow, waiting for its owner to return, to fall asleep in this bed again.

Her boots are by the door.

Laurel’s necklace, that she stopped regularly wearing, for fear of losing it, is on the bedside table.

She had made herself a home in this room, and it’s intensely obvious. It already feels empty. Hollow. Like the room knows its lost the very thing that made it feel like a home.

Another sob rips through Ava as she picks up the shirt, the fabric soft underneath her fingers. When she brings it up to her face, it faintly smells like the bodywash Sara uses. Just enough to warrant Ava pulling her sweatshirt off, pulling her own t-shirt off, and replacing it with Sara’s. She rifles through Sara drawers for one of her bigger sweatshirts, needing to be rid of the blood stained one she’d been wearing. When she finds one of the Bureau hoodies she’d gifted Sara as a joke, thinking she’d never wear it, but being pleasantly surprised when she did, she changes into that, and then wanders back out of the room, towards the med bay.

She moves slowly, like she’s in a trance. It’s like she’s asleep, like she’s in a nightmare, trying to move properly, but not being able to make her body do it.

The Waverider seems empty with the knowledge that Sara is no longer manning it.

Ray is the only one in there when she arrives in the doorway. They’ve cleaned Sara up. It seems like he’s just finishing off. “Fuck,” Ava whispers, because seeing her there, motionless, clinical, makes it more real again.

He starts, turning around. “Oh. Ava. I wasn’t expecting you. Gideon told us you wouldn’t wake up until someone woke you up. We didn’t want you, you know. Waking up alone.”

Ava sighs, leaning into the doorway, shrugs. “Well, I did,” she says, her voice dreamy. It doesn’t sound right in her head, but she can’t seem to get her voice to sound like it usually does.

Ray echoes her sigh. “Yeah. I guess you did. Grief does weird things to brain chemistry. I guess Gideon didn’t take that into account.”

“You did a good job,” Ava says, tentatively stepping forward. “She almost looks like she’s sleeping,” she continues, rueful. “No blood. Wound covered.”

“She’s not sleeping, Ava,” Ray says, his voice sympathetic, but patronising, as if Ava might really be so dazed that she doesn’t know what’s happened.

“God. Fuck, Ray, I know. I didn’t forget that I just watched my fucking— my fucking girlfriend die. God. Fucking hell. Is she even my girlfriend. Is she my ex? What the fuck is that? What the fuck even is she to me anymore, I don’t— I don’t _fucking_ know she’s just _gone_ , Ray! She’s just gone! What do I do with that? How am I supposed to deal with that?”

And then Ray is moving across the room, and she’s being hugged by a second Legend she’s never hugged before. Ray had always looked like he gives good hugs, and he does, his arms wrapping around her, holding her tight. “I’m sorry, Ava,” he says. “It happened so quickly. I should’ve— I should’ve tried to stop her.”

Ava pulls back, choking back tears, wiping at her eyes, and, at least, she knows what to say to that, knows what Sara would’ve said without even having to think about it. The Legends were more than just her team. They were her family, almost like her children. “No. No. She wouldn’t have wanted that. She never wanted any of her team to get hurt. She would’ve died for all of you before she ever let you do the same. That was just…” she glances behind Ray, to Sara’s unmoving body. “That was just Sara.” She sighs. “Can I have a few minutes? I promise I’m not going to, you know… get stuck here. I just need a few minutes.”

He nods.

When he’s gone, Ava moves over to Sara. She’s wearing different clothes, and they cover the wound on her stomach. She looks peaceful.

Sara had almost never been peaceful when she was alive, except for the rare moments when Ava woke up in the middle of the night, and got to watch her sleeping. Ava wishes she could go back to one of those moments, wishes she could live in it forever. She picks up Sara’s hand. It’s cold, now. Impersonal. It’s not _Sara’s_ hand. It’s not the hand that had grabbed her and kissed her that first time, it’s not the hand that had touched Ava everywhere and anywhere, always so soft and careful.

It’s all wrong.

Everything is wrong. She can’t breathe. The Waverider is suffocating her. She immediately knows what she needs to do, what she  _has_ to do if she's going to survive this: she needs to get out. Away. She needs to get away from it all. She looks down at Sara. “I’m sorry, my love. I can’t stay here any longer.”

Sara doesn’t say anything.

Obviously.

Ava hopes Sara would understand, would understand Ava leaving mere hours after she’d died, because staying on the ship is too painful. She drops Sara hand, backs away, and then, the second she’s out of the room, she takes the coward’s way out, and portals away, without even saying goodbye.

She goes to Gary, because she has no-one else.

She goes to the funeral, because she has to. She’s the grieving girlfriend. She puts on a brave face for the few people that knew Sara was alive to die again, reads out a eulogy, the words bitter in her mouth. The Legends are there, obviously, but, after that, she ignores calls from them, and eventually they stop calling her.

She takes time off work until it’s no longer possible to keep making excuses, and then she drags herself back in, but hides in her office most of the time, getting Gary to relay messages to the rest of the office. There’s always paperwork she can do.

They put up a plaque, and it’s not her idea, but someone seemed to think she would like that, to have her girlfriend memorialized like that, and she’s too afraid to tell them that she hates it, that she hates the reminder, that walking past it a dozen times a day is killing her, slowly, from the inside.

One day, she gets ridiculously drunk, after having passed the plaque one too many times in a day, and dyes her hair black, because it feels like she’s losing control on reality, feels like everything is falling apart, and dyeing her hair, making that change, doing something stupid and pointless and out of character is, at least, some proof that she’s real.

Nothing has felt right since Sara died. Nothing has made sense.

Things start making sense when John turns up with a woman who looks like Amaya, when they tell her that this nightmare is just that—a nightmare, not real.

When she goes down in a hail of bullets, it’s with the hope that, maybe, everything is going to be okay. That, maybe, the life she was living without Sara, the life that had just been two straight months of mourning, of trying to get away from rock bottom, and failing, wasn’t real. That that wasn’t how Sara’s story was supposed to end. How their story was supposed to end.

The bullets from the guns of people who used to be Sara’s team pierce her skin, burying themselves in her body. Something rumbles on the roof of the Bureau, and, through the pain, she recognises the sound of the jumpship taking off.

The pain is blinding, the worst thing she’s ever felt, and the last thing she thinks before everything goes white is that this is what Sara felt, and her heart breaks all over again.

And then she wakes up, no longer in the Time Bureau, but in her bed, a searing pain no longer in her torso, but in her head. Her head is spinning, like reality is twisting. But when the pain fades away, when she opens her eyes, the strands of her hair on the pillow are blonde, not black—and, in her arms, warm and soft and breathing, is Sara.

* * *

Ava isn’t responding on the comms. She hasn’t responded for fifteen minutes, and it’s stressing Sara out. Sara patches in Gideon. “Gideon. Any idea where Ava is?”

“Yes. She was headed down to the docks. I think she figured out what the fugitive was, and was trying to take it on. However, she turned her comms off, and I have not been able to contact her or locate her since.”

“You _think_ she figured it out?” Sara asks, paging in the rest of the team. “Team. Get to the docks ASAP. I think Ava’s in trouble. She went there alone.” Going back to just Gideon, she hisses into her earpiece. “What do you mean _think_?”

“She said it was something called a Striga. I have been researching, and was about to call you with information. I believe she was correct. My records show that defeating it requires cayenne pepper.”

Sara ends the call, racing towards the kitchen, grabbing the spice on her way out. All the while, she’s trying to call Ava, and every time, there’s no response. A sick feeling settles in her stomach. “Guys,” she says, paging the whole team again, trying to ignore how her stomach is still turning at Ava’s silence. “We need cayenne pepper to defeat the fugitive. I’m bringing it. Hold it off until I get there.”

The sick feeling, the knowledge that something is wrong, is confirmed, when she gets to the docks, sees most of the team fighting the creature, holding it off with expert ease—and Zari, kneeling down next to something on the ground.

Some _one_ on the ground.

She chucks the pepper at the guys fighting the fugitive, and then runs over to Zari, falling to her knees, the world caving out from underneath her, because it’s Ava on the ground, her eyes closed, a red wound on her head and another on her chest, right over her heart—and she’s not breathing.

Something in the back of her mind, a terrible whisper, tells her that Ava is already gone, but she ignores that.

“No,” she gasps, and Zari looks at her, her face sympathetic, full of sorrow. “No,” Sara repeats, her hands going to Ava’s chest. “No. Zari. Why are you just sitting there? You could’ve— you could’ve done something. We can still _do_ something,” she gasps out, pressing down, pressing down so hard that she hears ribs break, pressing down with everything she has. A stream of desperate pleas fall out of her mouth. “Ava, baby, please, please, don’t do this to me, Ava, _please.”_

She moves her mouth up to Ava’s, cupping her head with her hand, trying to breathe air into lungs that aren’t working.

Mouth. Chest. Mouth. Chest. Mouth. An endless ( _hopeless_ , the voice tells her, but she ignores that as well) cycle. Minutes pass and they feel like hours.

It was just a routine mission. Nothing like this was supposed to happen. It’s so wrong that it can’t possibly be happening.

She moves back to Ava’s chest, pounding down, tears falling from her eyes, begging her to just _wake up_. “Come on, baby. You can’t go like this. You can’t leave me _now_. We’re just getting comfortable again. Ava. Ava _Sharpe._ Wake _up_. Wake up for fuck’s sake, baby, please, just wake up and then we can get you to Gideon and then—”

Zari pulls Sara’s hands away. “Sara. She’s gone. She was gone before you got here. She was gone before _I_ got here.”

“No,” Sara says, gritting her teeth. “No. She’s not—” She looks down at Ava, pulling her head into her lap, stroking over it, her fingertips staining red with blood. “We can _fix_ her. We can fix this. We can— we can go back. We can fix this. She’s not _supposed_ to die, Zari. I can _feel_ that. This isn’t— this isn’t right. It’s wrong. We fix things that are wrong. This is _wrong_.”

Sadly, Zari shakes her head. “You know we can’t do that, Sara. You know that. She wouldn’t want you to.”

Sara gasps, holds back another sob. She looks up, away from Ava for the first time in ten minutes. The Striga has been defeated. The children are being rounded up to have their memories erased.

They’ve completed the mission. And, yet, they’ve failed Sara’s most important one: keep Ava safe, no matter what. She looks back down at Ava, her hands skating over her body. “There has to be _something._ ”

There’s a hand on Sara’s shoulder, and she looks up to see Ray. “There isn’t, Sara. I’m sorry, but there isn’t.”

Sara opens her mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. The voice in her head speaks again, the voice of reason, and Sara realises it’s Ava’s voice. _There’s nothing you can do, Sara_.

She sighs, finally accepting it, and, just like that, her world shatters.

She cradles Ava in her arms, dropping a kiss on her temple. A tear falls onto her skin, and she wipes it away with a thumb, her fingertips stroking over Ava’s skin. She swallows, forcing back the tears still trying to rise. “Okay. Okay,” she says, resigned, her voice tiny. “She’s— she’s gone. But we need to— we need to get her back to the ship. Clean her up. She’s covered in— God she’s covered in _dirt.”_

She kneels, trying to get a grip on Ava’s body, trying to lift her, but Ray’s hand, still on her shoulder, pulls her away. “Sara. Let me. You don’t have to.”

“You don’t think I’m strong enough?” Sara asks, spitting it, bitter.

Ray tilts his head. “I think you’re perfectly strong. I just don’t think you’re up to it right now, Captain. Please. Let me.”

So she does. She lets him kneel down, pick her up like she weighs nothing. She trails him back to the Waverider. The second he sets her down in one of the chairs in the med bay, she turns around to look at the Legends hovering, and orders them away. “I can do this on my own. I don’t want anyone else helping to clean her up. She wouldn’t want anyone other than me to do it.”

Even if the Legends had grown on her, it’s the least Sara can do not to have men Ava never truly knew staring at her lifeless body.

They don’t argue with that, and twenty seconds later, Sara is alone. The door slides shut, and Sara runs her hand over Ava’s face again. Her skin is cold. Her lips are parted, blood crusted on them.

“Why did you have to go off _alone_ , baby?” she asks.

But it doesn't matter that Ava can't answer, because it's not a real question. She knows how Ava would respond, had known the reason why she'd done what she'd done from the second she stepped onto the docks and saw Ava lying there.

And it’s the worst thing about all this.

It's not that Ava is dead, although, a week ago, Sara would’ve guessed that would be the worst pain she could possibly feel. That losing Ava, after losing everybody else she’s ever truly loved, would be the worst possible pain.

Sure, it’s horrible. It’s tearing her apart from the inside, blood pouring from her heart like it had from Ava’s. But that’s not the worst part.

It’s not even that Ava was alone when she fell prey to a fugitive that didn’t need her, that simply killed her and tossed her aside to get to the children she’d been protecting, children they only just managed to save when they got there just in time to be too late to protect Ava.

Sure, knowing Ava died alone, with no-one to hold her, no-one to reassure her that it was okay, is tearing Sara apart with guilt. But it’s not the worst part of it.

No, the worst thing is that the reason Ava was alone was because they’d _argued._ Because Sara hadn’t been thinking. Because, when Zari suggested they act more like kids, that they get inside their minds, Ava had been reluctant. Sara hadn’t realised why until it was too late, until hurt had registered, obvious and piercing Sara’s heart, on Ava’s face, as she spat out a bitter sentence at Sara about ‘protecting the kids _my_ way’ and turned on her heels, leaving Sara.

Forever.

So, that’s the worst thing. That they hadn’t gotten to say goodbye. That their last conversation was an unresolved argument. That it’s Sara’s fault Ava had been alone, going up against the Striga with no backup. That it’s Sara fault Ava died probably doubting if Sara truly cared about her, if Sara really understood what she’d been going through ever since she found out the truth.

It’s Sara’s fault that she’s dead.

It’s Sara’s fault that Ava’s body is lying lifeless in the med bay.

Not Ava.

Just her body.

Her beautiful, perfect body, that Sara had spent hours upon hours learning every line and detail of. That is still just as beautiful as always, even in death, but that can’t hold a candle to the beauty of who she had been. Of her mind and her emotions, her emotions that had been defying her very nature just to exist. The sound of her voice. Her mannerisms. The way she laughed. Her kindness. The way she’d touch her neck when she was nervous. The way her mouth would open slightly when she wanted Sara. The way she’d duck her head and smile whenever Sara toyed with her hair.

All of that is gone. All of that is what made her _really_ beautiful is gone.

Sara chokes back more tears, and then finds a cloth, wiping carefully at the wound on Ava’s head until the blood is gone from her hair, before working her fingers underneath the scrunchie in her hair, pulling her hair out, smoothing it down around her shoulders.

“Gideon?” she calls out. “Can you fabricate me a Bureau suit?”

Two minutes later, there’s a fresh suit. That’s what she would’ve wanted. That suit was her armour.

But even that wouldn’t have done anything to protect her from the claws of the Striga, from getting wounded so deeply she immediately went into cardiac arrest. She closes her eyes, briefly, and then cuts the shirt away from her body. Her chest is a mess of blood, and she deals with it as quickly and efficiently as possible, wanting more than anything to just clean it, to put a bandage on it, and be able to hide it underneath a shirt and blazer.

They take a while to get on, but once they’re on, doing up the buttons, pinning the pin to the lapels, smoothing it all out—it’s strangely cathartic.

She pulls Ava’s shoes away, pulling down those stupid knee socks that had gotten her thinking all sorts of stupid stuff, all sorts of things that she’s never going to be thinking again.

She undoes Ava’s belt for the last time, pulling it away from the belt loops. Her mind expects Ava’s normal reaction to that—giggling and blushing and ducking her head, her tongue running over her lips every time Sara got in her lap and pulled her belt away from her body with practiced ease—and when nothing comes, when all she is met with is a silent, unmoving body, she breaks down again, tears falling as she pulls the blood-stained shorts down Ava’s legs and replaces them with the Bureau pants.

When she’s done, when the blood has been cleared away, and she’s been dressed again, she looks almost normal.

Sara traces a finger around her lips, lays a kiss on her temple. When she pulls back, it’s like she can feel how Ava returning that kiss would feel, like Ava’s ghost is pressing her mouth to Sara’s temple, and she reaches up a finger, brushing against her own skin.

Gideon’s voice shocks her out of her reverie. “I can keep her in this condition indefinitely, Captain. There is no need for immediate plans to be made, if you are not up to it.”

Sara shakes her head. “We can do something tomorrow. She hardly has anyone. It’s just me and Gary and the Legends. We do something tomorrow,” she repeats, as if to hold herself to it.

“Do you wish to tell Agent Green, or should I?”

Sara sighs, sits down on the other chair. “I should do it. I _have_ to do it. I’ll go see him now.”

She portals in to his apartment, Ava having given her the coordinates for emergencies. He doesn’t take it well. In fact, he takes it incredibly badly, breaking down almost more than Sara had, if that were even possible.

He’s panicking about arrangements, about work, and all Sara can do is assure him that everything will be sorted out.

The funeral will take almost no work. She sends a message from the Waverider to the Bureau informing them of what happened. She should’ve visited them as well, but breaking the news to Gary was hard enough. She doesn’t have the energy to talk it through with a bunch of suits, a bunch of suits that she no longer has any reason to try to get along with.

Gideon gives her something for dreamless sleep, and she wakes up to Zari running into her room, telling her that Hank is here, needing to see for himself.

Sara sighs, pulling herself up. She’s still fully clothed. She runs a hand through her hair. She looks like shit, but no-one could expect anything more.

When she gets to the med may, Hank is already there, alone, examining Ava’s body. She leans in the doorway, her arms crossed. “Proof enough for you?” He turns, starting slightly. “She’s dead. I’m sure you’ll want us to fill in pages of forms, but we’re not doing that. Not yet. Not until after the funeral, at least. Which we’re planning, by the way. We were all closer to her than she was to anyone at the Bureau.”

She’s thankful at least that he doesn’t put up a fight against that. “As you wish.” He sighs, glancing one last time at Ava. “It’s truly a shame. She was an excellent Director.” _And an even better person,_ Sara thinks, bitterly. He sighs. “I have to be going. I have to acquire an interim Director.”

If Sara had been thinking straight, she would’ve noticed something off about his wording, but she’s not. As he leaves, she moves straight back over to Ava’s side, toying with a strand of hair. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry. I let you down. This is my fault.”

All she wants, in that moment, is for Ava to reassure her like she always does, like no-one else can. For her to come up behind her, wrap her arms around Sara’s waist, and press a kiss to Sara’s ear, her neck, her jaw. For her to whisper, “It’s okay, darling. It’s okay.”

She does none of those things. She just _lays_ there, unmoving. She is no longer the woman Sara was in love with.

That’s Sara’s fault, and she’ll have to live with that for the rest of her life. Sure, Ava had made a decision by herself. But she’d been forced into it by an argument they wouldn’t even have been having if Sara had been thinking straight.

“I let you down,” she repeats, before backing away, out of the room, because if she doesn’t leave right then, she’s going to be stuck there for hours.

Zari finds her, talks her through funeral prep, and Sara just chooses things that Zari puts in front of her.

The funeral is tiny, though, and doesn’t need much arranging, and hardly even twenty four hours later, she’s in the ground.

And gone. For good, this time.

Sara runs out of tears at some point, and then ends up throwing up, her body still trying to expel the grief somehow.

She goes to sleep alone, in a cold bed, but wakes up in Zari’s, curled up against her best friend, her teammate, the woman who had hated her at first, but is now the closest confidante she has, her second in command, someone she’d trust with her life. She had crawled in there in the middle of the night, needing to be held by _someone_ , because, apparently, being with Ava had gotten rid of her ability to be alone at night.

There’d hardly been a night since they got together again that hadn’t been spent at one of their places.

In a way, Sara hates Ava for breaking her like that, for breaking down all the protective walls she had put in place, for re-instilling in her a need to be close to be people, to be held and touched and looked after, but she doesn’t, not really. It’s healthy to need people. Something in the back of her mind tells her that.

And, in any case, she could never hate Ava.

At breakfast, Ray and Nate are overly cheery, clearly trying to put on a brave face for Sara, but then they’re grimacing, and Sara can tell they’re hiding something. She pokes at her cereal. “Spit it out, boys.”

Ray glances at Nate. “We got a message from the Bureau. They want you in there this morning to debrief with Hank.”

“Fine,” she says. “Whatever.” She throws her bowl in the sink. “Try not to let anyone else die when I’m gone.”

She gets dressed, hides some of the dark circles under her eyes with makeup, portals into the Time Bureau—and runs straight into Ava. Her heart drops into her stomach, because it’s not Ava. It’s not Ava, because Ava is dead. Sara buried her. So, it’s not  _her_ Ava. Just another clone. Another clone who glances at Sara as they walk past each other, and shows her nothing but indifference. No recognition at all, and it hurts so much it feels like Sara can’t breathe. Feels like she’s being burnt alive, like someone is piercing every inch of her skin with knives.

It feels even worse than realising Ava was dead.

Even _hatred_ from this AVA, how she used to look at her when they first met, would’ve been better than looking at the face of the woman she’d been sure was the love of her life, and seeing _nothing._

No emotion. Nothing.

It hurts so much more, so much more that it feels physical, pain flaring up in her stomach, and converting into something else. Anger. Pure, white hot, anger. Anger like she hasn’t felt in years, hasn’t felt since she was brought back. It burns in her stomach as she walks through the Bureau towards Hank’s office, her eyes blazing, her jaw tight. She can feel her blood boiling.

She is nothing but anger in human form, her pain morphing into something more horrifying and yet easier to deal with.

When she gets there, she opens the door without knocking, striding inside. He stands up as she enters. “Captain Lance. Could you not have knocked? I wasn’t expecting you yet—”

He cuts off as she crosses the room, gets behind his desk, and has him pressed against the wall, her knife at his neck. He’s got a almost a foot of height and a significant amount of weight on her, but she’d dealt with people much larger and stronger than him in the League. All you have to know is the right way to hold the knife, the right way to press it against a person’s skin.

And she knows everything.

“How fucking dare you? She hasn’t even been buried for a _day_ and you got a fucking _replacement._ ”

He sighs. “There was a protocol set in motion, once I became aware of Director Sharpe’s… background, to allow a smooth transition if anything were to happen to her. The replacement is only temporary. Until we can find a person suitable for the long term position. It simply reduces the amount of panic in the office. This way, there is no reason for anyone to believe they’re in danger, not until we can fully understand what happened and why. Now, I suggest you remove the knife from my throat. I understand you and Director Sharpe were close, but you will not be receiving the same favourable treatment from—”

“ _Close_?” Sara asks, her voice dripping with disbelief. “ _Close_?” she repeats, incredulous. “You think we were _close_? Is that what you think?”

“Well, it was clear you had a friendly relationship with her. I was not in the position to know exactly how close Director Sharpe was to each and every one of her friends, but—”

“God, you fucking idiot. We weren’t just friends. We were _together_.” At that, a brief expression of surprise flickers over his face, before settling back into his expression which is clearly supposed to calm, supposed to placate her. “We were going to move in with each other. I just buried my _girlfriend_ , and you just made me come face to face with her clone, with someone who clearly doesn’t know who I am. Do you have _any idea_ how painful that was?” She presses the knife in closer, until a thin red line shows up on his skin. “ _Any fucking idea?”_

He swallows, and out of the corner of her eye, she can see him reaching for something. A weapon, or maybe a panic button.

She tuts, pressing it in harder, eyeing whatever he was looking at out of the corner of her eye. “You try _anything_ and we will blow this fucking place to _pieces_. We don’t need you. Ava is gone. There’s no reason for us to cooperate anymore. You don’t have any _power_ over us. Got it?” Hank nods. “If I let go of you, are you going to try anything?”

He shakes his head. She pulls back. He rubs at the blood on his neck—and then he glances down again, and reaches underneath his desk, towards the gun Sara had noticed the second his eyes flicked there.

One quick, easy movement later, and she has the gun in her hands. He might be government trained, but she was trained by the League. Their trainers were more talented, more ruthless, and less accepting of failures. Sara can best almost anyone.

She cocks the gun, raising an eyebrow. “Really? You know my background. You thought that would work?”

His eyes sweep over her figure, at how much smaller than him she is, and it’s clear he had let his biases get in the way, had assumed she couldn’t be _quite_ as competent as people had said she was.

Had made the wrong assumption.

She steps closer, still pointing the gun. “You ever been shot by a girl, Hank?” He shakes his head. “You ever been shot at all?” He shakes his head, again. So, he hasn’t seen _real_ action. Of course the guy running the Bureau is nothing more than a glorified pencil pusher. “I have. It _hurts_. But I think we’ve already established that I’m the more experienced out of the two of us.”

“You’re not going to shoot me in the middle of the Time Bureau. You’ll be arrested before you’ve even taken two steps out the door.”

She waves the courier on her wrist. “Won’t have to take any steps out of the door.”

He swallows again, obviously slightly nervous. “The AVA protocol was not put in place to purposefully hurt you. I didn’t even know—“

“You still replaced her, though, didn’t you? You would’ve known it would hurt people who knew, and yet, you still did it.”

“Captain Lance. It was the most commercially viable option. You’re not going to shoot me because of that. It was just numbers. That’s all.”

It’s the most despicable thing he could’ve said. She wants to shoot him. She wants him to feel the pain she’s feeling. She raises the gun—and then Ava’s voice echoes in the back of her mind. _No, Sara. Don’t do this. Please, darling._ Tears immediately rise up behind her eyes. It sounds so real. More real than anything has felt since Ava died.

Ava’s voice, like it always had when she was alive, grounds Sara. Her hand wobbles slightly, her finger hovering over the trigger, and then she drops her arm, the gun pointing down at the ground. She sighs, and he does too. She clicks the safety back on. The sound is loud in the room, and he flinches. That will have to be enough. The satisfaction of seeing him flinch, completely at her mercy. With one movement, she empties the bullets from the gun. They pool in her hand, dark metal against pale skin.

Skin on hands that are just as deadly as the bullets that rest in her palm.

She looks up at Hank. “No. I’m not. Because that’s not what she’d want. She wouldn’t want me to go back to being a killer, especially not because of her. But if you don’t send that clone back to 2213 soon, I’m not above making you hurt.”

“You can’t tell us what to do.”

“I can. Because if you don’t, I’m letting everyone know that that woman isn’t their boss. There’ll be mass panic. Somehow, I doubt you told other people about the clones, did you? So, you send her back to somewhere _safe_ , and you give _my_ Ava a proper memorial. And I won’t spend the next month tearing this place apart.”

With that, she moves her attention to her wrist, opening a portal. “Wait!” he says. She turns back around. “We didn’t debrief.”

She rolls her eyes. Of course he’s thinking about bureaucracy. “We debrief when I decide I want to,” she spits out, walking through the portal.

The second it closes behind her, she collapses down into one of the chairs in her office, dropping the gun on the table, all of the confidence immediately gone, as what she just did sinks in.

 

That’s where Zari finds her, hours later, her head in her hands.

“Sara. Are you okay?”

Sara can’t look at her. “I snapped. Hank—” She stops, trying again. “Ava—not _my_ Ava, another one—was there. He got a replacement. A fucking _replacement_ , without any of her memories of me and I— I snapped.” There’s an intake of breath from Zari, and Sara forces herself to look up. “I snapped. I couldn’t take it. She would’ve been so ashamed of me.”

Zari glances warily at the gun, at the bullets on the table next to it. She can see Zari counting them. “Sara,” she says slowly, as she examines the magazine. “There should be seven bullets. There’s only six. Did you…?” She trails off, and Sara hates that Zari thinks she might have done something drastic.

Sara sighs, slowly unfurls her right fist. There, in her palm, is the seventh bullet. Zari plucks it out of Sara’s palm, tucking the gun into her waistband.

“So when you say ‘snapped’, you mean…?”

“I threatened him. Might have lightly injured him with my knife.”

“No serious injuries?”

Sara shakes her head. “No.”

“Ava would be proud. She wouldn’t have wanted you to hurt him.”

“I know,” Sara says, bitter. “That’s the only reason I didn’t shoot him.” She sighs. “But, God. I felt like I was— I felt like all the progress I’d made since I came back from the pit was _gone_. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted him to be scared of me. He _was_ scared of me. I’m a monster. She always told me I wasn’t but… the second she’s gone… I snap. I can’t do this without her.”

Zari sighs, dragging up a chair to sit next to Sara.

“You’re grieving, Sara. That doesn’t mean all the progress is gone. You _didn’t_ hurt him—”

“I hurt him a little bit.”

“—okay. You hurt him a little bit. But Nate always made him sound like an asshole so I’m sure he deserved it. The point is, he’s fine. You didn’t give in to that side of you, because you knew Ava wouldn’t want you to. You knew it was wrong. She’s still helping you, Sara, even if she’s not here. You _can_ do it without her. You’re the strongest person any of us know. You’re captain for a reason. You’re going to get through this, I promise. We’re all going to be here for you.”

Sara sighs. “Yeah. Yeah. I just. I can’t believe I never got to say goodbye. I never got to tell her one last time how much I love her.”

“She knew, Sara.”

Sara shakes her head, tears falling, and finally admits what she’s been hiding until now. “We argued. That’s why she was on her own. The last thing we did was _argue_. She died not knowing whether I loved her or not.”

At that, Zari grips her arm. “No, Sara. You two were stronger than that. One argument wouldn’t change that. She loved you, okay? You hear me? She loved you, and she knew you loved her, and she would not have doubted that over one argument.”

“It was about the clone thing. I fucking— I was insensitive and she stormed away and—“

“It doesn’t matter what it was about. She knew you loved her, Sara. I can tell you that for sure.”

Sara slouches further into her chair. “I just want. I want to tell her that. I just need one last chance to tell her that.”

And then, suddenly, she has a headache. It’s splitting her skull open, like she’s being torn apart. She yells out, and Zari looks at her in horror. She clutches at her head, falling forward in her chair.

She closes her eyes, hoping for some respite, and when she opens them, she’s in her room, not her office. There is a warm body against her back, and when she turns around, it’s Ava.

Alive, and awake and staring at her.

Her eyes are watering, her lip wobbling. Ava reaches out a hand, tracing it over Sara’s lips, before pulling her in for a kiss. Ava’s breath stutters into Sara’s mouth, desperate and needy and heartbreakingly sad. She can almost feel how much Ava is aching from here, how much she needs to be touched and held and reassured.

When Ava pulls back, her eyes are still closed, pain in her face.

“Morning, baby,” Sara whispers, her fingers ghosting over Ava’s face. Ava lets out a small sob, swallowing, obviously trying to right herself. “Hey. Ava. It’s okay. I’m here." She sighs, steels herself to ask the question. "Did you also—“

“Have a dream about the timeline where you died?” Ava asks, her voice hoarse, ragged. “Yes. I did. God. It felt so real, and vivid and like I really— like I really lived those two months and that’s because it— it _was_ , wasn’t it? Real? It wasn’t just a dream, was it? That really happened, in those timelines, those timelines John and Charlie talked about.”

The knowledge that Ava had endured two months breaks Sara’s heart. She’d hardly had more than a couple of days and it was killing her.

Sara sighs again. “Yeah. Time doesn’t like things like that happening. It’s forcing the memories on us to try to make sense of all of those realities being created and disappearing again. They need to go somewhere, so they’re going into our heads.” She curls closer to Ava, holding her tight. “There’s not going to be any other repercussions, we don’t think. Gideon told me this was… a possibility. We should be okay, now, but…” She shakes her head, sighing. “We just have to deal with the knowledge of what we did in those timelines.” She clenches her jaw, trying not to cry, because it feels like she really just did spend the whole night crying, even if it was all in her head. “God, I was a monster without you.”

“No,” Ava says, firm. “You’re never a monster.”

“You weren’t there. It was my fault. I got you killed. That stupid clone argument we had at the camp. You died mad at me. I couldn’t handle it, and I… reverted. Went back to being this cold-hearted bitch.”

“And I ran away from everything, Sara. I dyed my hair and listened to moody music all day and ran away from my responsibilities, including work ones, because I couldn’t deal with any of it. We both did shitty things. But that’s not who we are. Those people weren’t _us._ The whole point is that those timelines were _wrong_. I knew it was wrong. Didn’t you?”

Sara nods. “Everything felt wrong. You dying like that. It wasn’t right. I knew it wasn’t right.”

“So we can’t let what we did in those timelines affect us, darling. It wasn’t _us_. They went through different things. It doesn’t change us. It doesn’t change who you are or who I am, because we didn’t go through those things, okay. You got that? You’re still you. I still love you. I love you so much.”

Hearing those words sets something right in Sara’s mind, quiets the screaming a little. They’ll have to talk things through, but maybe not yet. Maybe not now. Ava is right. It doesn’t change who they are. It doesn’t change how they feel about each other, and so, at least for this morning, things are okay.

“Mmm, yeah,” Sara murmurs, pressing in underneath Ava’s chin. “I love you, too. That’s what woke me up. I needed to tell you that. I love you, Ava.”

Ava’s fingers stroke through her hair, soothing. “We’re okay. We have each other again. We’re okay,” she whispers, pressing her mouth to Sara’s temple, kissing her.

That feeling triggers something inside Sara. She frowns. “In the— in the dream. The memory. The… memory dream, I… I kissed you, there, on your temple, and it was almost like I could… like I could feel you kissing me back.”

Ava smiles, does it again. Her lips are warm, soft, and, right in that moment, feel like the best thing Sara has ever felt. “That was the last place I kissed you before I… before I ran away. It’s nicer doing it when you’re alive,” she muses, and then shrugs with a flick of her fingers. “Maybe you _did_ feel it. We’re getting memories from lives we never lived shoved into our heads. Who’s to say that couldn’t happen?”

“You’re saying you think I really did feel you through alternate realities? Seems pretty unlikely. Especially coming from you, baby. I thought you refused to believe in anything without a scientific basis.”

Ava shrugs again. “There’s magical fugitives. I think I can allow kisses crossing realities.”

Sara smiles. The fond smile on Ava's face, the pure hope and love shining through and chasing away the fear, the terror, the sadness that was on her face when she woke up, stirs something inside of Sara, makes her feel like, maybe, really, they  _will_ be okay. “You’re so cute.”

“In any case, us meeting in the first place was ridiculously improbable. Us falling in love was even _more_ improbable, seeing as I wasn’t even supposed to have _emotions_. I think the universe wants us together, so who's to say it wasn't trying even when things were wrong?” Ava asks, her voice soft. “Even then, we were together. That has to mean something.” She sweeps some hair out of Sara's face. "I'm yours, Sara. In every reality. In every life. I know everything about you. I know all of your... dark secrets and your scars and all the things you have the potential to be and choose not to, and I still choose to love you. There's nothing you could tell me that would change that. I'm yours. You're mine. We're doing this together."

“Mmm,” Sara hums, cuddling in closer again, tangling their legs together, her hands skating over every part of her body, relishing in feeling Ava so alive underneath her fingertips. “I like that. Together in every life.” She looks up at Ava, her eyes wide, holds out her pinky. “Promise?”

Ava smiles, her eyes creasing. She links their fingers together, pulls Sara in for a kiss. “In every life, my love,” she whispers against Sara’s lips.

**Author's Note:**

> um? sorry? i guess? i hope this made you feel some things. sorry in advance if it made you feel TOO many things. 
> 
> as always, find me on twitter @_avasharpe or tumblr directoravasharpe.tumblr.com


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